[JimStinson]

In fact here is your answer right here...................


ASHLAND — Of the many things that Tom Stultz has accomplished in his life, one of his most treasured came more than 30 years ago.

It was in July the summer of 1979 when the first Negro League Baseball Reunion took place right here in Ashland.

Stultz, a native of Greenup who now lives in Lexington where is a senior vice president for IMG, was at the forefront of the event that was the springboard to the Negro League Baseball Hall of Fame in Kansas City that has served to honor some of the greatest players to ever live.

Much has been done since that time to bring recognition to some of those great players and teams, but Stultz’s idea is what started it all.

It started out because a friend of Stultz’s grandfather, Phil Leslie, had a family friend named Horace “Choppy” Thomas who liked to talk a little baseball.

“Choppy and Bea (his wife) were at every family event we had,” Stultz said. “Dave (Stultz) and I played a lot of ball and talked a lot of ball. Choppy was telling us about his brother Clint, who he said ‘played a little ball.’”

Tom Stultz sometime later read an article from a Charleston, W.Va., newspaper about a man named Clint Thomas from Greenup who played in the Negro Leagues and was called “the black Joe DiMaggio.”

Thomas’ nickname was “The Hawk” and further research from Stultz revealed what an amazing player Clint Thomas was in the old Negro Leagues. He did a story on him in the Greenup Sentinel, a paper Stultz owned that later became today’s Greenup News.

“Of the people I called — people like Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, Monte Irvin — they all knew about Clint,” he said. “He was kind of a big deal.”

So it was Stultz’s idea to have some of the old players come in for an 80th birthday party for Thomas and that blossomed into a full-fledged Negro League Reunion. He merged the celebration with the Tri-State Fair and Regatta to give it more exposure and from there it exploded.

“At the banquet we had several hundred show up,” he said. “We had a press conference on a boat. Fourteen or 15 players came in for the birthday party to honor Clint Thomas.”

Stultz and his wife, Pat, moved from the area before the second reunion took place but Ashland Oil took the idea and ran with it and it was celebrated for two more years here.

Ernie Banks, Buck O’Neil, Monte Irvin, Jake Stevens, Turkey Stearns, Buck Leonard, Ray Dandridge, Judy Johnson, Ted Page, Eugene Benson and Leon Day came the first year. In later years, Banks, Paige, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Bob Feller and Happy Chandler were among the guests.

“Most of those guys are in the Hall of Fame,” Stultz said. “Clint still isn’t, but he should be. They started a wing (for the Negro League players) in Cooperstown.”

Stultz said many of the players stayed at his home in Greenup and talked about the old days for hours. He was mesmerized with all the stories.

“It started as an idea to honor Clint,” he said. “If I could have videotaped the stories. The mood just changed. Of course, I cry at the Smurfs, but when they got up and saw several hundred people turned out, those guys instead of getting up and joking were all choked up.”

The national media came to Ashland, including Sports Illustrated and NBC. It suddenly went from being a big birthday party to a time of honoring players who were incredibly talented but never received proper recognition. The stories that came from the memories of these men would make you laugh one second and cry the next.

“Having Ernie Banks and Monte Irvin at your house, as a baseball fan, it doesn’t get any better than that,” Stultz said. “They were telling stories about Luis Tiant Sr. when he was in the Cuban League. It was an incredible blessing to be involved in that.”

It also scored national points for the Ashland-Greenup area, who treated the Negro League players like the heroes they were. Stultz said he still gets goose bumps remembering the moments.

“To see the acceptance of that in Greenup, my hometown, and to get a thank you card signed by just about every African American in Greenup is one of my treasured possessions. I have it framed in my office at home.”

The Negro League Hall of Fame had a short life here, a couple of years at the old Jean Thomas Museum, before a movement was started to bring it to Kansas City, home of the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro League era.

Buck O’Neil, who died about a year ago, was instrumental in getting the Negro League Hall of Fame in Kansas City, where it receives thousands of visitors a year. O’Neil did more to further the Negro League cause than anybody else but he sadly never made it into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

Tom Stultz’s name probably isn’t in that Negro League Hall of Fame although maybe it should be. The recognition that the old league enjoys today started right here in northeastern Kentucky, when a big birthday bash for “the black Joe DiMaggio” became a movement to rightfully honor some of baseball’s all-time greats.